


What Is It?

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-09 09:27:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17999228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: While they're camping, Jim, Blair and Simon see an unusual animal





	What Is It?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sentinel Thursday prompt monitor

What Is It?

by Bluewolf

"What - the - hell - is - that?"

Simon stopped halfway out of his tent to stare at the large creature making its way past their camp towards the river.

Jim stuck his head out of the tent he shared with Blair, and blinked. "I don't know... Chief? do you know?"

Blair looked out, peering myopically at the creature. "Huh? That's not possible... " He groped in the tent for his glasses, put them on and looked again. "I see it, but I don't believe it..."

"But you know what it is?" Simon asked.

"I know what it looks like... but... "

"Go on," Jim encouraged.

"You don't get these in America - they live in the tropics! Though I believe there are some living wild in Florida. And at least some species are protected in their countries of origin - anyone found trying to smuggle a juvenile out of the country would be arrested - "

"Juvenile?" Jim asked.

"Well, look at the size of it. Someone might try to smuggle one that was just a few days old out of the country; no way could anyone smuggle out one that was even quarter grown. And the only place you could realistically keep one would be in a zoo. Anyone knowing anything at all about them would know that's not an animal you could possibly keep as a pet... even though poachers do take and sell the most unlikely young animals as pets. Then once they're grown the buyers discover how unsuitable they are as pets, and release them into the wild. Which might be considered more humane than having them put down, but unfortunately if a released male and female meet... well, Nature takes its course, and you've got the start of a population of an invasive species. Florida has quite a few of those. We'll have to report seeing it... It has to have escaped or been released from somewhere pretty recently, though, because I would expect the cold of a Washington winter would kill it."

"But what is it?" Simon asked.

"Oh - it's one of the monitor lizards."

Jim and Simon looked at each other. "I thought anthropology was the study of man," Simon muttered as he reached for his cell phone.

"And how man interacts with his environment," Blair replied as he ducked back into the tent. "That means knowing what animals they hunt, what animals they consider dangerous... " His voice faded into silence.

They would probably never find out how a large monitor lizard came to be running around in the Cascade National Forest, though Blair suspected that it had probably escaped from a zoo; and if that was the case the sooner it was returned to that zoo the better. The animal was probably happier in the wild; but it would be more comfortable in the controlled environment of a zoo, especially once the weather began to get colder.

Outside the tent he heard Simon's voice. "Yes. I want to report a sighting... "

 

 


End file.
